© 2017 Elsevier Inc. Collaboration among academic authors promotes innovation and research productivity and increases the quality of published papers. The aim of this paper is to investigate collaboration and co-authorship in the area of finance, focusing on ten leading journals in the field. We employed social network analysis to examine the structure of the networks and the ways in which authors, institutions and countries interact. Our empirical results indicate that co-authorship networks are greatly integrated. We also observed that the size of collaboration networks has been increasing over the last 18 years. Our findings highlight the mechanics of collaborative research production and are therefore useful for the administration of academic institutions and policymaking in higher education.